Fossil fuels currently provide approximately 85 percent of the world's energy needs, and the use of fossil fuels will likely continue through the coming decades due to these fuels' low cost and continued availability. However, the combustion of fossil fuels also raises concerns regarding global warming due to the production and release into the atmosphere of large amounts of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. One method of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emission caused by the combustion of fossil fuels without also reducing the amount of fossil fuel consumption is to sequester carbon dioxide in reservoirs such as deep geological or oceanic reservoirs. However, geological and oceanic sequestration methods cannot sequester as much carbon dioxide as is emitted through the combustion of fossil fuels. Further, geological sequestration generally requires maintaining high pressures at the sequestration site. In addition, various thermodynamic and kinetic factors can cause the degradation of reservoirs over time, leading to the release of previously sequestered carbon dioxide.
Therefore, there exists a need for improved systems, methods, and compositions for storing combustion waste products such as carbon dioxide.